MS. LUSSENBURG: First of all, I would like to thank you for being
here on a Saturday morning, and we know we are the last panel before the
ultimate panel and the conclusion of this Conference, and we thought
that what we would do is, we would take a slightly different format for
the discussion today. Rather than having PowerPoint slides and someone
standing at the podium giving a presentation, we thought it might be
better to have a dialogue here and talk about some of the issues in the
area of financing, renewable energy, and clean technology.

I am Selma Lussenburg. (1) To my left, is Michael Barrett. (2)
Michael is a partner at Bennett Jones (3) law firm in Toronto. He
specializes in private corporate transactions and energy development. He
has a renewable power development practice and he has worked on a large
number of renewable power projects. He is very familiar with the
Canadian landscape on renewable power. To my right is Paul Durbin. (4)
He is Senior Counsel with the law firm of Miller Canfield. (5)
Interestingly, he seems to commute between Chicago and New York-not
exactly a suburb-and he is also involved in financing capital projects,
and he ventures in the renewable energy sector. He does a lot of public
and private project finance work, and he has worked on a significant
number of renewable energy projects throughout the United States.

I was also going to say a little something about the Ontario
Capital Growth Corporation, (6) where I serve as chair of the
organization. A number of people have asked what it does and it is
relevant to what we are discussing today, which is providing financing,
but it is very much niche financing. It is an Ontario deposit agency. It
has a fund to funds. It has two million dollars and it partners with
people like the Toronto Dominion Bank, (7) Manulife Financial, (8) and
large public pension plans to put money into a fund. (9) That fund, in
turn, invests in clean technology, renewable energy, and tries to build
out the Ontario footprint, if you will, in terms of the economy. (10)

The organization has a second initiative, which is called the
Ontario Emerging Technologies Fund. (11) We have $205 million and, in
essence, what we provide is venture or seed capital to companies which
are supporting innovation or have new innovative technologies in certain
defined sectors of the Ontario economy. (12)

Again, these sectors are clean technology, digital media, and
certain health technologies, and we provide the financing. We follow the
market. We have a concept where we only co-invest with other private
sector or venture capitalists, and we allow them to, in fact, validate
the market or the opportunity, and then we follow along.

And if anyone has clients that are looking for funding in those
sectors, please feel free to speak to me or contact me sometime by
e-mail. I would be happy to put you in touch with the right people.

Our topic today is financing. I am going to ask each of our
speakers to discuss the primary sources of investment capital for
renewable energy, projects in their respective countries, and what the
funding sources are for renewable power projects and for clean
technology companies.

So perhaps I will start this time with Michael and then I will pass
it over to Paul.

PANELIST DIALOGUE

Selma Lussenburg

Michael Barrett

Paul Durbin

MR. BARRETT: Thank you, Selma. Good morning, everybody.

On the renewable power side for funding purposes, you have a pretty
traditional model where companies look to get twenty percent of their
capital source through the equity markets and roughly eighty percent of
their capital source through the debt markets. (13)

On the equity side, the sources there tend to be either strategic
or financial players. On the strategic side, a lot of the power
utilities themselves are becoming quite active in the renewable space
for lots of reasons. (14) They see the returns. They also see the
profile of those types of projects help in terms of the overall company
profile. There is a very active set of equity investors in Canada. (15)

On the financial side, the federal government has set up through
the tax structure a flow-through share model, which allows for high net
worth individuals and institutions to invest through a corporation,
giving them limited liability but allowing for certain types of expenses
to flow directly back up to the investor. (16) So for certain financial
types, it is a very attractive model.

On the debt side, notwithstanding the fact that the Schedule I
Canadian banks are very healthy and have been the source of a lot of
backslapping and praise in Canada in the last few years, particularly
coming out of the recent economic troubles, they are not that involved
in renewable financing in Canada. They do a little bit, but they are
just not used to the model yet. Most of the debt financing in Canada is
European Union (17) ("EU") sourced mostly because they are
just used to doing it. The EU practiced in this market for a number of
years, understands the risk profile of the projects, and tends to be the
predominant source of the projects in Canada. (18)

The other significant source are the life insurance companies
("LIFCO") and some pension plans, and it makes sense to them
in the sense that projects, and I am sure it is the same in Canada, tend
to get twenty year power purchase agreements. So when you have a
locked-in top revenue line for twenty years, that type of a project
model fits very nicely with the LIFCO return investment that they are
looking for. So they tend to also be fairly active participants in this
space.

MS. LUSSENBURG: Paul, would you like to comment?

MR. DURBIN: We are primarily involved in solar and wind projects.
One of the reasons I am in New York is that New Jersey is a hot bed now
for solar development. I think there are eight thousand projects, that
includes residential, but there is a lot of commercial development
there. (19) These projects are heavily structured deals and project
finance oriented.

Like Michael mentioned it is eighty-twenty. This typically is what
you will see between debt and equity, but in the United States it is a
little different. There is an investment tax credit here, the Section
1603 cash grant, (20) that can be taken instead of the tax credit, so
the need for a tax investor is less urgent until the end of this year.
Then you are going to have to find tax investors for these projects. The
ones that we see are, again as Michael mentioned, utility driven
projects fully owned by a utility.

They take advantage of the cash grant. They enter into long-term
power purchase agreement ("PPA"). Typically, these are
projects under two megawatts, but they do quite a few of them. We also
have projects that are leveraged, and financing is pretty available now
if you have a strong PPA with creditworthy off paper.

We have seen projects from Morgan Stanley (21) and J.P. Morgan.
(22) We hear the Bank of China (23) is going to be active in the United
States on these projects, and European banks as well, because it all
began in Spain and Germany. Initially, that is where the wind and solar
development was strong in the early 2000s, and now it is continuing in
the financial institutions with the deals.

MS. LUSSENBURG: I am sorry. Maybe it is my ignorance, but you keep
on talking about a PPA. Maybe I am the only one who does not know what
that is.

MR. DURBIN: Sorry for that. PPA is a "Power Purchase
Agreement." Essentially, it is a twenty year contract to buy all
the power from a solar array. (24) These arrays tend to be sited on roof
tops, land base, or, less commonly in New Jersey where I am pretty
active, in California, but they are mostly land based facilities. The
PPAs are with utilities.

In California, as opposed to New Jersey, the state has a feed-in
tariff, and we will get into this a little bit later. In New Jersey, the
state uses a solar renewable energy credit to finance, in part, these
projects. (25)

MS. LUSSENBURG: I heard you comment a bit about China being a
potential investor, but Michael has observed it seems to be largely
Europeans that are coming into the Ontario and Canadian market. So is
that the same comment, or is there more money, I will call it United
States capital, which is being invested in this sector at the moment?

MR. DURBIN: Right now we see on the debt side and on the equity
side, it is domestic. The Bank of China, the transaction I was thinking
of, tends to work with Chinese companies that are building projects
outside of China, so you may see them in the United States in years to
come.

The European financial institutions are a little bit more active
now. We are seeing them on solar projects. There are a lot of European
developers that now have operations in the United States, and a lot of
the manufacturers of renewable energy equipment from Europe and from
Asia are building facilities in the United States. (26) As that occurs,
you see their financial institutions migrating with them to finance
these projects.

MS. LUSSENBURG: You were talking about financial institutions. You
were talking about private equity, so it is sort of an interesting
dichotomy that we do not have the financial institutions in the market
in Canada, and yet, we have the financial institutions in the market in
the United States, like a foreign financial institution, whereas we have
got private equity in Canada. It would be interesting to know what
causes that, whether it is risk or government policy. We will get to
that.

MR. DURBIN: I will just mention in the United States you see
private equity as well. So there are several different private equity
firms that are very active in investing in renewable energy projects.
(27)

MS. LUSSENBURG: So maybe we should talk a little bit about the
different incentives and legislative frameworks in the two countries,
and rather than have Michael start off, I am going to have Paul start
off this time, and then Michael can feed in.

MR. DURBIN: There are many federal and state programs that make
developing renewable energy projects possible. Without state support,
you are not going to have much development. You need both levels working
in unison.

Certain states that are very progressive on renewable energy
policies will have kind of a thriving market for renewable energy
development. New Jersey obviously does not have great solar. The solar
is where you would expect it to be, but the legislature about five years
ago decided to push forward with this policy, and it has really paid
dividends in terms of developing these projects and increasing their
supply of primarily solar power, but now they are pursuing a little bit
of offshore wind. (28)

So on the federal level, you have the investment tax credit that I
mentioned.

On the wind side, the wind belt can opt for either the investment
tax credit, which is now the thirty percent grant, or in other words the
thirty percent cost of the facility that they basically get in cash from
the United States Treasury after the placed-in service date. (29) There
is bonus depreciation, (30) which is a major factor. It is through the
end of this year one hundred percent cost of the project. So that is a
major incentive for investing in these projects and owning them.

On the state level, there are two different structures that I
mentioned. One of these structures is the feed-in tariff, (31) which
basically means the utilities are mandated to buy power from renewable
energy facilities at a certain price. The price is subject to
adjustments. In California, this works very well. (32) There is a lot of
development there.

Then you have the solar renewable energy credit, (33) such as in
New Jersey and elsewhere. In Ohio, I had been working on a project over
the last year that is still in place. It is a forty-nine megawatt project south of here in the wild, which is a wild game preserve.
American Electric Power (34) is behind this. They are buying the power.
It is being developed by an outfit out of California. I believe the
private equity firm involved in that project is Good Energies, (35) but
they are utilizing all the federal and state renewable energy policies
they can and all the programs they can to make it happen.

In addition to the tax programs of solar renewable energy structure
you have in certain states, you also have financing available at the
federal level through the Department of Energy. (36) That has not been
utilized that frequently, but it is something that is used on large
projects. We have seen it used on concentrated solar, but it is not used
quite as often on photovoltaics. (37)

MS. LUSSENBURG: Michael?

MR. BARRETT: So the first thing to say about the various manners in
which renewable power is developed in Canada is that for legal
jurisdictional purposes the federal government really has no role in
Canada in setting targets, if you will, for renewable power. (38)

So there is no equivalent to renewable portfolio standards in
Canada, either at the provincial or at the federal level. The manner in
which the various provinces come at it are in three ways. There are two
provinces, British Columbia and Ontario, that have feed-in tariff
programs, (39) and I think we all sort of understand how those work.

Many provinces, in fact most of the provinces, operate under
competitive bid processes so they do not set the price at all. (40) The
provinces just put out a call for power and invite the development
community to come to them as long as the community meets certain basic
qualification criteria and then submit bids for twenty year contracts.

The one market in Canada that is a little bit different was in
Alberta. Alberta is a merchant market for electricity. (41) So it is a
spot market. You pulled your wind farm, and you sell your electrons into
the grid at what the price is on that day. It can be a very profitable
market. The pricing tends to be quite good.

The challenge in that market, though, is because you do not have
the benefit of a long-term supply contract, it makes the financing of
those contracts a challenge. (42) You can go out and find a merchant in
the middle that will give you a five, ten-year supply contract, and take
a little bit of a slice on the way through on the spot market.
Notwithstanding the challenges, Alberta has the best wind resource in
the country by far. (43) Alberta has struggled to get a significant
number of wind megawatts on because, unless someone can balance sheet
finance it themself, it is a tough market to build in.

So, it is really kind of a patchwork. Ontario gets all the press
because of the feed-in tariff and particularly for the magnitude of the
pricing that is available for certain fuel types there. But it certainly
is not the predominant mechanism that is used across the country.

MS. LUSSENBURG: As I hear both of you talk about various government
incentives, both tax breaks and then other funding, here is my question:
are they mutually exclusive? Sometimes you find government programs and
tax incentives where you can only take advantage of one. You cannot take
advantage of both, or if you get a grant or a loan at a certain point,
the government or the funding agency says you have already gotten money
from "ABC," from here, or you already have this tax provision,
and therefore, you cannot get that other one.

Can you comment on that at all, whether people should be on the
lookout for that, and if so, why would you pick one versus the other?
What is good about it? They did not know this question was coming.

MR. BARRETT: On the technical side, most of the purchasers of power
under the provincial programs, of course, are the provincial utilities.
(44) In their contracts, almost unanimously it will say, if you are
receiving any other sources of government funding, you need to disclose
those, and those get netted out of your revenue for the electron. So you
are not going to double dip in that sense if you found another source of
power or another source of funding.

The other way that that gets played out a little bit is, in the
United States, renewable power projects have a second stream of revenue
for recs or carbon credits that come out of those projects. That gets
built into the financing model given to the lending community.

In Canada, with a couple of exceptions, but mostly not ones in
which you sell the electrons to the power utility, all the environmental
attributes that go with the contracts go to the utility as well. (45) So
in Ontario, the Ontario Power Authority (46) is collecting the warehouse
recs and carbon credits through all the twenty year green power purchase
contracts. (47)

And so that is sort of taken off the table from folks, which I
think as I mentioned, is a little bit different than what you are used
to dealing with in Ontario. There is a related side now. There is a fair
amount of pressure on the Ontario Power Authority to do something about
that. There is an awful lot of potentially commercializable
environmental attributes that they can be doing something with, and so I
think you will see in the near future something happening in that
regard.

MS. LUSSENBURG: Thank you.

MR. DURBIN: To answer your question, one of the issues with the
bonus depreciation is there is an offset for a portion of the grant.
Under Section 1603, there is a thirty percent grant for the cost of the
project. (48) Typically when we approach these projects, there are three
levels of incentives you look to.

You look at the federal, which I mentioned, and the state. With the
state, you can also, and this is very common, look to the Department of
Commerce (49) for additional help, and oftentimes, it will have programs
that will allow you to take advantage of state taxes or state financing,
grants, and things like that.

As states across the country have tried to move into this area,
they have been pretty aggressive prior to the big squeeze on their
budgets in terms of investing in their commerce departments to bring
this development into their budgets, and part of it obviously is the job
creation. (50)

One of the factors with the Ohio project--the fifty megawatts
project--is that they are going to build a photovoltaic manufacturing
facility in conjunction with it, and that is part of the deal. (51) You
are not going to have a big, heavily subsidized project like that more
than likely without some type of major job creation. That is what is
going on here.

MS. LUSSENBURG: Thanks. The panel that preceded us was talking
about the supply chain on the transportation side, so I am wondering if
we could talk a little bit about what we are seeing in the renewable
energy framework for the development of the supply chain in terms of
financing and the opportunities that are there. How do they interface
with the actual output of the energy, which is obviously the game plan,
and so where are your clients sourcing their inputs, and how is that
working at the moment?

MR. DURBIN: Typically, our clients approve a half-dozen
photovoltaic ("PV") manufacturers. The manufacturers tend to
come from either Europe or Asia. (52) There are one or two in the United
States. (53) There is a Chinese manufacturer that has a facility in
Rockford, Illinois, where it manufactures PV. (54) That company is
trying to get a foothold in the United States and is also selling to
Europe. (55)

Sourcing is primarily from out of the country on smaller projects.
(56) For larger projects, as I mentioned, you can sometimes attract a
manufacturing facility. I work with a solar tracker manufacturer from
Spain. Solar trackers are what the PV panels sit on and rotate with the
sun during the day to optimize the production of power, and therefore
increasing insulation for the facility. (57) This Spanish manufacturer
would like to build a manufacturing facility in the United States. The
problem is it just went through this situation in Spain where the
federal government reduced the feed-in tariff, and the concern is
because there is so much political risk here, with the states with tight
budgets, that the United States government will reduce the level of
support for renewable energy, and therefore, the supply chain will be
negatively impacted.

So that is what is driving this. If there was more certainty
long-term, I think you would see quite a bit of overseas manufacturers
of renewable energy equipment located in the United States. There are
several, and there is a lot going on in the United States, but it could
be a lot more if there was more certainty of the law.

MS. LUSSENBURG: When you say political risk, you are talking about
the programs being canceled? We do not usually think of the United
States as being an area of political risk.

MR. DURBIN: Yes. Actually, I should specify. Political risk meaning
that the programs could be either reduced, the incentive could be
reduced so the development is not as commercially viable, or could be
eliminated.

MR. BARRETT: In regards to the supply chain discussion in Canada, I
guess the most interesting part of that is the domestic requirements in
the province of Ontario. As part of the feed-in tariff program, the
government sort of makes a deal with the community that says, "We
will be paying these above-market rates for certain fuel types, but
understand that if you are going to come build projects and Ontario will
get paid those things, you are going to have to source fifty, sixty
percent of your project from Ontario based sources, fifty percent for
wind, sixty percent for solar." (58)

And that is proving to be quite a challenge, particularly on the
solar side. There is currently one significant photovoltaic
("PV") manufacturer in Ontario. (59) That said, there is a
rush in 201 1 to build plants in Ontario on the PV side, and those are
almost unilaterally Asian-based companies that have come over and set up
assembly plants rather than true manufacturing. (60)

There seems to be some wiggle room in the legislation around what
manufacturing really means to get to the sixty percent. The policy seems
to be driving that particular outcome, which was the government's
intent in the first place.

On the wind side, it is much easier to get there. There are a
couple of Canadian-based turbine manufacturers, and the nature of those
projects allow you to get to the fifty percent a little bit easier than
on the solar side. (61) The one part that does not get a lot of play on
sourcing is biomass.

There are a lot of people kicking the tires on very big biomass
projects in Canada, and it makes some sense. The wind is free. The sun
is free. But the challenge for biomass projects is always feedstock, and
how do you secure a twenty year supply of whatever you are going to use
to drive your biomass or basically your turbine? (62)

So, Canada has kind of a national advantage there. There are huge
losses to the country that can be made available for feedstock, for
those types of projects, and they do not have the domestic content
requirement restrictions at nearly the levels that other types of
projects do. (63) So I think it is fairly certain you will see that type
of fuel type start to gain some traction, in part, trying to get around
some of the domestic content restrictions on the renewable fuel types.

MS. LUSSENBURG: Our discussion today is focused on more access to
capital, and we heard in the presentations from yesterday that it is
more expensive to invest or to produce clean energy, renewable energy,
or going to clean technology.

So if you were sitting at ten thousand feet and you had to decide
whether you were going to go to Canada or the United States, why would
you pick one or the other? And what is so good or what is so bad about
one or the other?

Where is it better, all things being equal? If your investor is
neutral, does not care whether it invests in one jurisdiction or the
other, what can we learn from one or the other? What is the United
States doing really well? What is Canada doing really well? What are we
not doing so well at? Is that a fair question?

MR. BARRETT: Sure.

MS. LUSSENBURG: You can start.

MR. BARRETT: I would say on the pro-Canadian side you have a
financing community that is fairly vigorous, particularly on the equity
side. On the debt side, as I mentioned, the Canadian banks are a little
bit, but they are big balance sheets, and they are starting to come to
the party. (64) The nature of renewables on the debt financing side,
just to kind of lay this out for a second, is really kind of two-beat
phases. You fund either/or. The construction side, sort of a two or
three year window to build the project, and then you fund the running of
it twenty years after on as a sort of take-out loan basis.

The Canadian banks are not participating so much on the
construction loan side, but they will participate a little bit on the
longer take outside once the project reaches commercial operation
because the risk profile changes a little bit there. (65) So that
community is going to be quite helpful to getting it financed on the
Canadian side.

As I mentioned, we have great resources on the window and biomass
side; the solar side is not as good as many parts of the United States.
You have a number of jurisdictions on policy base at the provincial
level that are very supportive of renewable power, particularly in
Ontario, but others are also taking a number of steps. (66) Saskatchewan
recently had a three hundred megawatt call for wind. (67) The Maritime
Provinces are also putting out competitive procurement processes as
well. (68)

Those are things that are also occurring in the United States. I
cannot really say Canada has a distinct advantage or a leg up in any
particular way, but it is certainly a market where renewables have grown
exponentially over the last three or four years, and I would certainly
expect that to continue in the near future.

MS. LUSSENBURG: So just before you comment, is it a cumbersome
process?

MR. BARRETT: It has recently become quite cumbersome, particularly
on the permit end. To give you a sense of that, in Ontario when they
brought in the feed-in tariff program, one of the things that they
addressed through the legislation in the regulations was the patchwork
process that developers had to go through prior to the legislation. (69)
It really depended on the municipality you built your project in. You
could have a very favorable local counsel or a very unfavorable local
counsel, and that made for a lot of uncertainty coming into the
government. So the provincial government got rid of the variability in
the approaches, began to permit the projects through a one window
process. (70)

If you get a single renewable energy approval for your project in
Ontario, at the provincial level you are done. You finish that and it is
all good. When the first permit was issued in Alberta, it immediately
got appealed, and it got appealed on the basis of NIMB Yism
("not-in-my-backyard"). This is also a significant factor in
Ontario these days.

There are all sorts of anti-wind coalitions that are gumming up the
system, if you will, by appealing the projects on the basis of health
concerns, whether significant science was brought to bear, on setback
requirements, or sort of any head they can use to try and challenge the
process they are doing.

So getting a project financed, the physical process of getting it
built, and getting it paid by somebody is pretty easy. Getting the
permit is challenging.

MS. LUSSENBURG: Paul?

MR. DURBIN: Between the United States and Canada, and there is just
more demand in the United States, the problem is when it comes to
renewable energy development there are only a handful of states where
you can get it done, with the exception of a one-off deal. (71)

So we see quite a few special projects that are being developed
around the country. And these are--these project structures are unique.
They are hard to duplicate. They tend to be large. As Michael mentioned
about the request for proposals in Canada, we have quite a few of those
in the United States as well. I believe that in the United States it is
going to expand, I hope, in terms of state laws that are supportive of
renewable energy. I believe this will be driven because the companies
are now gaining market share, larger companies are being developed, and
companies from overseas are coming in. (72)

These transactions are profitable and the cost of generating a
kilowatt an hour, say of solar power, is dropping because photovoltaic
prices are falling. (73) So it is hard for me to say there are
advantages of the United States over Canada. We have clients that are in
either country. They will go wherever there is an economical project.
The suppliers from Europe want to supply the United States and Canada,
so they will locate wherever they get the best advantage. I think right
now in certain states and certain provinces you can do really profitable
projects that make a lot of sense economically.

MS. LUSSENBURG: You said there are only a handful of states where
you can get it done. So what does that mean? That you cannot go to
Arkansas or Tennessee and have a renewable energy project?

MR. DURBIN: No, because in terms of mass development of renewable
energy projects there are certain states with applicable state law. The
public utility commission has set up an infrastructure, so the projects
work financially. And those states and others in the Southeast, there is
not much going on in this area. You really need both the federal and the
state laws on your side because without support of state law, you are
not going to have much development. (74)

MS. LUSSENBURG: So my next thought or question is if you had a
clean slate and you took the view that we had a national policy in
either or both countries that we were going to get eighty percent of our
energy from clean technology and renewable sources, what is it that we
need to do today to put that kind of a framework in place and to make it
attractive to private capital as opposed to relying on the government
continuously to provide grants or incentives? What is it we need to do
in order to develop a framework where this is a viable proposition?

MR. DURBIN: I think you have to look at the energy source. Wind:
where is wind plentiful? In the Plains States. (75) What is the problem?
Why is there not a lot of wind development in the Plains States? It is
because the transmission lines do not run out there. So you need to
expand the grid. (76) That takes a major investment and we discussed
that at one of the seminars yesterday.

If you had a clean slate, you would want to have a transmission
grid that was aligned with the productive centers with respect to each
energy source. Consider West Texas: you would be able to get power from
West Texas where wind is plentiful out into other parts of the country.
You have solar, which is plentiful in Florida, California, and in the
Southwest. You would have a means by which you could get it out to the
rest of the country. You would have a national renewable portfolio
standard that would allow this transmission and that would not punish
states. You would have to set it up in a way where it would work for
everyone but that you could somehow pull the power from where it can
most efficiently be produced and distribute it to where it is being
demanded and used.

MS. LUSSENBURG: But that infrastructure, in essence, is what we are
talking about.

MR. DURBIN: And on the financial side in the United States--and I
will give you an example--a kilowatt hour of power in New Jersey is
about fifteen cents. (77) A kilowatt hour of power in Illinois is about
eight cents. (78) Why? Illinois has a lot of nuclear power. (79) It is
very inexpensive to produce. (80) The problem is renewable energy costs
more to produce right now.

Now, there are technological advances, and the President spoke in
the State of the Union address about getting the photovoltaic price down
to a dollar a watt. (81) Well, it is three to four dollars a watt now to
produce solar. (82) So I do not believe in the short term that this can
be done without being subsidized, unless there are technological
advances. This is not a desired result but the alternative would be the
cost of traditionally produced energy, coal, and nuclear would go up.

So you do need financial incentives on the national level, and it
would be nice if you could just have a national policy that supported
renewable energy. Then the states would play less of a role, but that is
just not how it is set up right now.

MS. LUSSENBURG: Michael?

MR. BARRETT: A couple of things: I would say to get to eighty
percent is a pretty big number.

MS. LUSSENBURG: I am flexible. So how about sixty percent for
starters?

MR. BARRETT: You would have to put nukes in there if you were going
to get anywhere near that kind of number.

It is funny yesterday somebody made a comment from, and I forget
the gentleman's name, but from a hydrocarbon background and he made
a comment about nukes being in trouble. The recent Japan situation is
going to cause people to question nuclear as a real base load source of
power. I thought to myself when he made that comment that it was not so
long ago we were all staring at CNN while oil gushed into the Gulf of
Mexico. And yet, still no one is saying that the petroleum industry is
going under any time soon. So I think nukes have a very big role in
getting to those kinds of percentages.

I would also echo the thought that really the only way to do the
projects on a non-subsidized basis is to make the economics of the
projects comparable to their alternatives. (83) The most obvious way to
do that in the near term is to price the externalities that go with
hydrocarbons into them, and a carbon pricing is the most obvious way to
do that. Once you start building those costs in, suddenly the economics
of renewable projects start to look not so bad. To give you a sense of
it, wind is being purchased in Ontario at thirteen and a half cents a
kilowatt hour. (84) The wholesale price in the market is about six or
seven cents, (85) which is double. But the pricing at six or seven cents
that people quote is based on the fact that most of the power generation
in Ontario is very old. (86)

The infrastructure behind that is going to have to be replaced at
some point soon. To build new nukes even on budget or build new gas on
budget is going to drive the price way up from the six or seven cents
quite close, if not above, to the price that is being paid for wind in
the current technological state it is in today.

So I do not think we are that far away from wind being able to be
quite profitable at a sort of normalized market rate. Solar has got
quite a bit further to go to get there and I just do not see any way in
the short term, at least, that it is going to be without some kind of
subsidization being a significant component to the mix. But on an
absolute basis, the costs are dropping very quickly. (87) I think the
discussion around solar will change.

MS. LUSSENBURG: I hate to say this, but I do not think you answered
my question, which was: how would you change the framework or the
landscape to get there from a legislative source?

MR. BARRETT: I would price carbon into the mix. That certainly is
something I do in Canada. In the short term, I know the official policy
is to wait to see what the United States does but I think there is good
thinking around a "go-it-alone" approach on that front, and
the next election will have a lot to say about that. Aside from taxation
paced models, the federal government really has its hands tied in
federal renewable portfolio standard-type approaches. You are just not
going to see that in Canada. It is going to have to be done on a
provincial basis. (88)

I think other provinces will be watching very closely to see how
that plays out. If the current administration falls, and it fell in part
over its push of the Green Energy Act, I think it will be very hard to
find other jurisdictions that are willing to stick their nose out into
the middle of the fray to regulate those type of outcomes.

MS. LUSSENBURG: Thank you. So I would like to ask Paul and then
Michael to cover anything that they want to share that you have not
already shared, and then I would like to open up the floor for
questions. Is there something that you want to tell us that I have not
asked you? This is your golden opportunity. Otherwise, we are done.

CONCLUDING REMARKS OF MR. DURBIN

MR. DURBIN: I think I will echo some of the things I said but the
main driver for these states to develop these policies and encourage the
development of renewables are their renewable portfolio standards.

Now, this morning I took a look at Ohio since we are in Ohio--and I
do not do a lot of work here but I did a solar project here--and Ohio
has twenty-five percent by 2025. (89) So twenty-five percent of the load
in Ohio will be from renewables.

How are renewables defined? Oftentimes it includes things that you
would not normally consider to be renewables. Here I believe it is
called third advanced generation nuclear. (90) So half of the standards,
twelve-and-a-half percent, come from traditional renewable sources such
as thermal, solar, photovoltaic, wind, and new hydro. (91) Then you look
on the other side of the ledger, another twelve-and-a-half percent, and
there are all these other things.

So the key thing, and I want to make two points in this area, you
need to really drill down that the renewable portfolio standards exist
in thirty-six states, but there are so many different models. (92) The
other issue is that there is kind of an opt-out built into a lot of
these standards in two different ways. One, if it is cost prohibitive for the rate payer to have that amount of renewables in the load,
meaning their electricity rates go up too much and that is kind of
determined by the Public Utility Commission, (93) then they can kind of
put the renewable portfolio standard or portion thereof to the side.
(94) The second way they kind of minimize the impact or reduce the
development of renewables in these states is by allowing them to buy the
renewable energy credits from out of state. (95) So you may have a rec produced in California for twenty-five dollars, and in New Jersey they
just had an auction two weeks ago at four hundred and fifteen dollars.

So you can see if you are a developer, unless you can get that four
hundred dollar price, you are not going to build the solar generating
facility. The renewable portfolio standard is key to driving renewable
energy development and, in particular, what the Public Utility
Commission does in its implementation of it. That is something that I
kind of looked at across the country and some of them are really strong.
Some of them weaken over time, and others are not going to lead to a lot
of development.

MS. LUSSENBURG: Thank you. Michael?

CONCLUDING REMARKS OF MR. BARRETT

MR. BARRETT: A couple things just to sort of circle back on
financing. We talked about more traditional financing, equity debt
financing. But renewable financing is sometimes more accurately
described as traditional mergers and acquisitions ("M&A")
models because the nature in which projects get built up is kind of like
a prospector mining. You have small companies with driven entrepreneurs
who are out there taking the initial step in project development.

These entrepreneurs will go out and secure their land leases, start
their initial permitting process, and may even get to the point where
they get a Power Purchase Agreement with the utility. But then they run
into the wall. That is not that expensive to do. Then they will go out
and find hundreds of millions of dollars in capital to pay for the
turbines or modules for photovoltaic energy. (96) That is just not what
those folks are about.

These entrepreneurs then take that asset, generally the contract,
and they flip it in the marketplace. They go and sell it to the large
international developers who are opening offices in Canada and the
United States and coming over here. (97) So financing really for those
folks is just a model where they take it to a certain step, kind of like
a prospector.

I am not going to pay for digging a hole in the ground and all the
rest of it but I am happy enough to tax it at this point. That is kind
of particular to the renewable power space in a way that these kind of
projects get started, implemented, and finished on a financing basis.
And particularly in Ontario right now, if you look at the number of
megawatts that have been contracted for already, we are well up over
1,500 megawatts of renewable power. (98) If all that power gets built,
it is more than enough to satisfy everybody's needs, either policy
needs or political needs in the province of Ontario.

I think the ship has sailed on the idea that there is a feed-in
tariff that is still a play for people to get their projects contracted.
What is going to come in Ontario and other provinces is more of a
consolidation of an M&A type market where people with the assets are
then going to be flipping them and consolidating them with larger
players who have the capital structure to build them out.

I think in the next two, three, four years the Ontario and some
other markets will really look like a rollup or consolidation market as
opposed to an initiation or getting-going type market.

MS. LUSSENBURG: Thank you. Questions?

DISCUSSION FOLLOWING PANELIST DIALOGUE

MR. SCOTT: Good morning. My name is Ryan Scott. I have a question.

You guys talked a lot about the front end with securing capital and
permits. I am curious, as to where the Purchase Power Agreement comes
into the mix. Is it something you need to have at the beginning of a
project, or is it something you kind of assume you will have no matter
what?

And given the differences in price per kilowatt hour you are
talking, notwithstanding some sort of a carbon pricing and capital
projects, how do you make renewables attractive to utilities and who
pays the difference? I assume I know the answer to that as far as I
think it is passed on to the end user, but I am just curious what your
take is on that.

MR. DURBIN: The Power Purchase Agreements ("PPA") are on
the very front end. We work with a whole lot of developers and they
often have entrepreneurs that come in with projects saying, "I have
this ten-acre parcel of land, it is near an interconnect, and this could
be the thing." We then ask who are the developers are going to sell
the power to and that is it.

The PPA is one of the top drivers on the financial side. (99) With
a feed-in tariff like in California, you must have an agreement with
Southern California Edison (100)--that is critical. Without that, you
probably will not be able to attract a lot of serious discussion and
definitely not any financing. I do not know if you want to talk about
PPAs.

MR. BARRETT: I would echo those thoughts. It is kind of the key
piece to the puzzle. The rest of it is just kind of marginal issues, but
you really need that contract in your hand to make the project saleable and viable.

MR. SCOTT: As far as the second part about the disparity in price
between conventional and alternative, it is approximately twice the
amount per kilowatt hour. (101) Notwithstanding the fact you talked
about the capital investments for the old traditional powers and pricing
in carbon, how do you make it attractive? How do you get the Power
Purchase Agreement for lowering its project that will not cost you twice
as much as what is available?

MR. DURBIN: I will give you a couple answers to that. One, it
depends on the technology. Photovoltaic is a lot more expensive than
wind but then you also have concentrated solar. (102) I do not know if
you have seen that, but I went to a facility in Spain with a six hundred
foot tower that is full of molten salt, and they have acres and acres of
mirrors that redirect the sun to heat the salt. The salt is then used to
produce steam which spins a turbine so you can have twenty-four/seven
solar. Now, the cost per kilowatt hour is lower for a facility like
that, plus you get around-the-clock electrical service. (103) That is
kind of a new concept and those projects are being built in the United
States by a couple of companies out west.

In terms of the cost differential, without the subsidies solar is
not going to happen right now unless there are major technological
developments.

MS. LUSSENBURG: If the purchase agreement is to buy at thirteen
cents versus six cents, is the thirteen cent agreement not more
bankable?

MR. DURBIN: It depends. I was working on a one megawatt project in
New Jersey with the subsidies, so this manufacturing facility is paying
fifteen cents per kilowatt hour for power. With the subsidies, and we
are going to put a seven hundred kilowatt facility on the roof top, they
are going to pay, I believe, eight cents. So the Power Purchase
Agreements in New Jersey are always lower than market because you get
revenue from the sale of the solar renewable credit. (104)

MR. BARRETT: On the "who-is-paying-for-it side," it is
the rate payers at the end of the day. I am not sure if the model is
different in the United States, but in Canada, the utility is kind of
indifferent. The utilities are regulated to offer contracts at a certain
price, or they will end up going to the rate setting process of
Ontario's Energy Board, (105) make an application, and protect
their buffer. (106) They will just pass on what they have to the rate
payers to maintain their spread on the way through. It is a risk that
the political party in office faces: that people will run the mechanics
through their head, look at their energy bills, and decide if it is
worthy of a price increase or not for all the other benefits that come
with it. But, ultimately that is the process.

MR. DURBIN: And then just to add one thing, when there is a feed-in
tariff like in California, the utility is required to pay a certain
amount and that obviously goes directly to the rate base as well. (107)

MR. CUNNINGHAM: My name is Dick Cunningham. Yesterday there were
lots of discussions of subsidies, whether feed-in tariffs or production
cost subsidies, and the general reaction of a lot of the panelists is
that it is terrible because they expire, and then you are left with
something you have created that is uneconomic when you withdraw the
subsidies. What is your take on that observation from a financing
standpoint?

MR. DURBIN: I see it as a problem with site manufacturing
facilities and developing more of an industry in terms of building these
parts of renewable energy equipment. We have not had an issue when there
is a mandate on the utility, say New Jersey, to buy under the renewable
portfolio standard when a certain percentage of their load has to be
renewables. (108) We have not had an issue on the financing side with a
concern that they are going to pull the rug out from under them on that
mandate since it is in place now.

In terms of future development, my concern is that as state
governments feel the financial pressure and the political pressure of
certain groups with that kind of shift opinion on renewables because the
state governments say it increases the utility costs of rate payers too
much, that you may not have future development.

I think the development that is already in process is pretty
secure, at least judging by the financial investment.

MR. CUNNINGHAM: You said you have been to Spain and you saw the
concentrated solar. This is an example of the feed-in tariffs that
produced the wind power explosion in Spain. If you go from Gibraltar and
drive west toward the coast over in that hilly area, there is this
massive collection of wind turbines and Spain's understanding is
all that now is becoming uneconomic. The Spanish government cannot keep
up with feed-in tariffs and I am not sure what comes after the
"and" but they do have a lot of "ands." But was that
your judgment as to what was happening in Spain?

MR. DURBIN: In Spain, there is a lot of fear from the developers
that I talked to. They felt that, politically, things at the end of the
day would not be as bad as was feared. I am not sure.

MR. CUNNINGHAM: My own personal opinion is that governments that
have subsidized something that has become really huge are more likely to
fall out of power because they backed away from it and it collapsed but
they continued to finance it. But that is just a political assessment
from a lunatic leftist.

MS. LUSSENBURG: But is there not like a private financing
issue-which is where I thought you were going--if you were a bank or
private equity investor and you were providing other mezzanine or debt
financing to the development project?

MR. CUNNINGHAM: Why would you give it if commerciality depends upon
the government's subsidy that may not be there?

MS. LUSSENBURG: Not why would you give it? Would your commitment
not be co-terminus with the end of that subsidy because you do not want
that? But then I guess there is no capacity to pay. So how do you deal
with that issue because there is no continuity, right, and although a
lot of the Purchase Power Agreements are two years?

MR. CUNNINGHAM: Even a better question than mine.

MS. LUSSENBURG: So when you are in the year 2018 and you need new
capital, what happens? Mike, maybe you want to go there?

MR. BARRETT: If the assumption in the question is that there is a
risk and you get issued a twenty-year contract by the power authority
but fifteen years into that contract the rate changes, then I do not
think that is going to happen.

The contracts are the contracts. Once they are signed, you are
locked in for twenty years, but I think, if over time new contracts are
not going to be awarded because the government pulls in its horns on the
feed-in tariff rates, then frankly I think that is a likely outcome.

I think in Ontario you are not going to see the current feed-in
tariff rates survive past five years from now, or maybe less. But I
think that is expected. I think the idea is that you incent the
development of the market place, the community around it, and you hope
that that all drives cost down, and it becomes self-sufficient through
that incubation period initially.

MR. CUNNINGHAM: Or the price of carbon will go up.

MR. BARRETT: Yes, or other reasons why it becomes more normalized
from a financing standpoint.

To answer Selma's question, generally speaking, you would find
financing at the front end of your project, so that you would not be
going eighteen years into it to try and re-do financing. It is largely
done once it is built. There are very high capital costs at the front
end but, unlike a coal plant or a natural gas plant, they have no fuel
cost going forward.

It is virtually free to run the thing once you have built it. You
are really not facing a refinancing risk with the nature of these
projects at some point down the road. Once you got your contract, you
can finance off of that. Whether you can get contracts that are
financeable down the road, I think that is a separate question and that
will play itself out.

R. DURBIN: And on the equipment issue, if there is a breakdown in
the equipment, you usually have a warrant and the big insurance
companies are providing insurance to cover the warranty. They are kind
of double wrapping their assets.

MS. LUSSENBURG: Michael?

MR. ROBINSON: Michael Robinson from Fasken Martineau. A bit of good
news, a bit of bad news, and then a question.

The good news is that there was a comment that biomass is not
getting off the ground very well. I can give you some good news there
about "zoo poo."

MR. BARRETT: I am all ears.

MR. ROBINSON: The Review Committee that I sit on just approved a
grant to the Metropolitan Toronto Zoo (109) and some other partners to
take all the zoo poo plus a whole lot of other nasty things that come
from fast food places. They want to get rid of this waste and make a
biomass operation there. That is a grant so that they can take that
project on to the point of getting their feed-in tariff.

I think the bad news, and I disagree with Michael a bit on the
sanctity of the feed-in tariff, is that anybody who watches what
happened in Canada and Newfoundland in 2008 and then looks hard at the
Canadian parliamentary system can realize that a government can pass a
law, which, if it is clear enough, will cancel your contract and you
have no recourse unless you are a foreigner. Because in our system, we
have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which does not recognize business
interests, does not recognize corporate interest, and does not recognize
sanctity of property; it recognizes individual rights.

And the former Premier of Newfoundland put through a law in
thirty-six hours right from the first, second, and third readings to
signature by the left-handed governor to expropriate assets. (110) The
only recourse to that corporation was not under Newfoundland law because
the statute specifically stated there is no recourse under this statute;
the recourse was under the North American Free Trade Agreement, so the
federal government and provincial government who did not sign that
agreement shelled out $130 million of our taxpayer money.

So if this government in Ontario does not stand, I see no reason
why a new Conservative government could not just cancel all contracts.

MR. DURBIN: Just rip them up.

MR. ROBINSON: Just rip them up. With a clear and specific bit of
legislation, this would appall my American colleagues, and they would
say, "You do not have a constitutional right?" We do not have
a constitutional right to the sanctity of property.

So that is the bad news. Maybe you better buy some political risk
insurance from United States Ex-Im Bank (111) ("US Ex-Im
Bank") or something. The question is this: yesterday I mentioned
this interesting phenomenon of the US Ex-Im Bank guaranteeing $450
million of bonds of the United States company First Solar, so it could
come to Canada and build a very large array of solar panels. (112)

The United States company will do well out of this because it is
getting sixty-two cents a kilowatt for solar power under these feed-in
tariffs but I would ask you to respond to this irony that I see. Japan,
the United States, and the European Union are suing Canada at the World
Trade Organization (113) ("WTO") because Ontario included in
its legislation the obligation to source the equipment for solar, wind,
or whatever in Ontario, and is obviously designed to create an industry
by virtue of a subsidy. (114)

And my off-the-top opinion, not having read all the briefs, is that
it is a good case. So why is the US Ex-Im Bank, an agency of the United
States, suing Ontario on one hand and then issuing a guarantee for $450
million worth of bonds so they can take advantage of this illegal
statute?

MR. BARRETT: I am going to take this on. The first one was not a
question you asked but just a comment on the possibility they will tear
up contracts. I suppose that is a possibility.

I think the consequences of that for people's confidence in
Ontario, as a counter party, would be severely shaken if that threat was
pursued. There may be some short-term political gain for a conservative
party to promise to do that, particularly in a rural vote, as it tries
to come into power. But the long-term consequences of that would be very
dire in my view.

MS. LUSSENBURG: Did Ontario not get sued successfully under the
Uniform Commercial Code Section 3-407 where it changed the terms and the
Ontario government had to ante up?

MR. BARRETT: I am not sure about the 407 law. I know the recently
canceled natural gas plant in Oakville, one of my partners was involved
in that proceeding, is going to cost the Ontario government a pretty
penny by the time that is paid off. (115)

I am sure they can pass a piece of legislation that says project
managers or owners get no damages, even though the government can tear
up the contract. But that is pretty Draconian, I think.

MR. ROBINSON: Only in Newfoundland.

MR. BARRETT: Yes. The way, though, that it has played out a little
bit in the financing model is lenders and project developers are not so
much concerned that the contract itself will go away but under the terms
of the contract, there is a little bit of ambiguity about what you get
paid for.

Some people take the view that if they generate electrons and have
them available to feed into the grid, that is what they are paid for.
How the energy is used and what the customers do with it does not matter
but the contract says if the producer generates the electrons and put
them on the grid, customers are paying the producers for it. Others are
taking the view, and this is sort of a curtailment issue, that the
Ontario Power Authority or other authorities have the right to say we
actually do not feed your power right now. We are at a lull. We are at a
low period of time and day pricing is coming, and so you get paid for
what we use, and we are going to curtail the amount of power we use.

There is a risk there and something the lending community is very
focused on to make sure they understand the possibility that,
notwithstanding you got your twenty year contract, you may not see that
much revenue because the buyer steps away from buying it.

Under the domestic content, I have to be a little bit careful. Our
firm was retained to take a shot at the interior government on behalf of
Japan, so there is not a whole lot I can say in that regard. I guess I
would say the manner in which the regime protects domestic content
through the feed-in tariff, and I was discussing this yesterday, is such
that it is the developer itself that is required to purchase or procure through Ontario. It is not a government agency, not the entire power
authority itself or a government arm that is doing the buying under that
process, and I think there is some view that because of that distinction
it may stand.

On its face, sort of stepping back out of the legal analysis, what
you are going to force people to buy here kind of violates the basic
principles of the most favored nations status and World Trade
Organization principles. So I will be following certainly with great
interest how that plays out.

MS. LUSSENBURG: Do you want to add anything?

MR. DURBIN: Since I worked at the U.S. Ex-Im Bank about fifteen
years ago, when I was there we were focused on emerging markets and we
were not open for business in markets in which financial institutions
and insurance companies were doing business. So I am surprised that they
are supporting this export to Canada, but I would like to learn more
about it. It is interesting.

MR. BARRETT: We are actually doing the deal you are talking about,
I think it is the Enbridge facility that was discussed yesterday.

MR. ROBINSON: No, it is the First Solar one.

MR. BARRETT: Yes, so First Solar built a ninety megawatt solar farm
near Sarnia, Ontario, (116) and First Solar is also building these
publicly announced deals. We are doing these two deals, the second and
third largest solar farms in North America, with General Electric (117)
and Florida Power & Light, (118) and it is the same structure.

The lender has their loan guaranteed by the U.S. Ex-Im Bank, and
the idea, I think, is that the U.S. Ex-Im Bank looks at it like it is an
export out of the United States. The panels are made in the United
States and shipped across the border, so they are going to support that
export activity out of the United States by guaranteeing the loan.

MR. ROBINSON: But there will not be a contract if the solar panels
come in from the United States because the fit contract says you cannot
do that.

MR. BARRETT: In the Enbridge case and in the two follow-up cases,
those are under the regime prior to the fit contract which is called the
Renewable Energy Standard Offer Program ("RESOP") program.
(119) And there is no domestic content requirement with that program, so
there is no risk that the domestic content will get in the way of those
projects getting done, and they are at forty-two cents. They are not at
six cents. I mean, it is still way over six cents, I realize but--

MR. ROBINSON: A little rich.

MS. LUSSENBURG: So I am looking at the clock, and I see Jim is
lined up with a question. So we will have Jim as the last person
bringing a question to the panel. Thanks.

MR. McILROY: Thank you. I am James McIlroy, an international trade
lawyer. And when I see the word "tariffs," my ears always perk
up, and when I saw feed-in tariffs, I was intrigued by that and did not
know what it was, and now that it has been explained to me.

It really sounds like it is the other "t" word that
everybody is trying to avoid: "carbon tax." I think consumers
are going to see this as a tax because they are seeing it on their
monthly bills, but do not take my word for it.

We are going to see it within six months in Ontario. This is going
to be a major political issue. The issue, the way I have seen it
defended by the McGinty government when they attacked the minister, is
that he says, "I know we are paying a lot of money, but we are
going to get a new industry. It is job creation, and we are going to get
a new industry."

With respect to this second shoe that is going to drop, we have
already heard that the local content rules make it look funny when
Ontario is complaining about Buy America rules in the United States and
I think it hurts our case. (120) We have also already heard about this
World Trade Organization ("WTO") case that is already on.

Yes, this is a job creation program. This is industrial
development, but it is not to create an industry to supply the domestic
market; it is to create an industry to export. And my question is: are
we going to be in another WTO dispute? My friend Dick Cunningham can
correct me if I am wrong, but this smells like an export subsidy to me.
So you are going to finance an industry that is going to be landlocked.
You have told them you can export, but they are not going to be able to
export. I am just wondering is this feed-in tariff a goofy idea and we
are not going to see it any more? Or do you really think that it has
longevity?

You mentioned, Michael, we will lower the sweetheart pricing a
little bit as time goes on, and we will continue on with it, but it
sounds to me like it is not a sustainable financing option. Could you
comment?

MR. DURBIN: Is that a question for you?

MR. BARRETT: Sure. In the short term, it is not sustainable. I do
not think there is any way those rates can hold up in the longer term. I
would agree with you that one of the principal drivers of it is to
create not only the power generation but the manufacturing base to
support it all. I also agree that the thinking is that those will be
export driven facilities.

Certainly, the Chinese entities that have come to Ontario so far
view it with that in mind. They are locating in Ontario to service
predominantly North America, not just Canada. So when you cross that
forty-ninth parallel, that is where your issue gets triggered.

It is hard to see the viability of those manufacturing initiatives
without access to the United States market. I think they are hedging
their bets a little bit in the sense there was an issue I mentioned
before. When we think of the manufacturing facilities, we think of long
assembly lines and screws and bolts ending up, but it is large chunk
manufacturing and final assembly sort of stuff that they are doing.

MR. McILROY: It is a screwdriver plant.

MR. BARRETT: I think it is late stage assembly on the line and I am
not sure the capital investment that they are really having to put
forward to do that exposes them that much. I think they are kind of
hedging their bets a little bit, that they will able to service the
Canadian market, and if they find a trade issue that forecloses the
United States market, then they have not built a soup-to-nuts
manufacturing facility with hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars
at stake, and I think they recognize that issue. And that is a way they
are trying to address it.

MR. McILROY: Thank you.

MS. LUSSENBURG: That concludes our panel. Thank you very much for
your attention and your questions.

(18) See, e.g., Financing Renewable Engery: Accelerating
Ontario's Green Energy Industry, MARS, 10,
http://www.marsdd.com/dmsassets/reports/financing_renewable_energy.pdf
(last visited Nov. 4, 2011) (noting European banks are extremely active
outside of Europe, participating in and leading renewable asset
financing syndicates for projects in the United States and Canada, and
other developed and developing nations).

(31) See generally WILSON RICKERSON ET AL., FEED IN TARIFFS AND
RENEWABLE ENERGY IN THE USA--A POLICY UPDATE (2008), available at
http://archives.eesi.org/files/Feed-in%20Tariffs%20and%20Renewable%20Energy%20in%20the%20USA%20- %20a%20Policy%20Update.pdf (providing
comprehensive feed-in tariff programs at the state and federal levels).

(44) See generally BLAKES LAWYERS, OVERVIEW OF ELECTRICITY
REGULATION IN CANADA (2008), available at
http://blakes.com/english/legal_updates/reference_guides/Overview%20of%20Electricity%20in%20Canada.pdf (reviewing the electricity market
structures throughout Canada's provinces).

(45) See, e.g., Glenn Kauth, The Regulatory Wild West, CANADIAN
LAWYER MAG. (Apr., 2009),
http://www.canadianlawyermag.com/The-regulatory-Wild-West.html?print=1&tmpl=component (discussing how the Ontario Power Authority retains
the carbon credits generated by renewable energy producers and the
implications of such a policy).

(71) AM. COUNCIL ON RENEWABLE ENERGY, UNITED STATES RENEWABLE
ENERGY QUARTERLY REPORT 10-11 (2010) [hereinafter United States
Renewable Energy Quarterly Report], available at
http://www.acore.org/wpcontent/uploads/2011/02/ACORE_USonly_Q_REVIEW_low411.pdf.

(81) President Barack Obama, Remarks by the President in State of
Union Address (Jan. 25, 2011), available at
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/25/remarks-president-state-union-address.

(92) The Status of Renewable Electricity Mandates in the States,
INST. FOR ENERGY RES.,
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IER-RPS-Study-Final.pdf (last visited Oct. 28, 2011) (stating that the
State mandates differ significantly from each other as well as from
federal mandate proposals).

(95) See What are Renewable Portfolio Standards? FOREST RES.
ASS'N, http://www.forestresources.org/whatareRPS.html (last visited
Oct. 28, 2011) (stating that a regulated electric power provider under a
cap and trade system may opt out of all or part of its renewable source
goal by buying offsets from another provider that is exceeding its
goal).

(96) See Elisa Wood, Energy Entrepreneurs Flock to Renewables
Bonanza, RENEWABLE ENERGY WORLD (Oct. 12, 2011),
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/10/energy-entrepreneurs-chase-renewables-bonanza (stating how young green energy
entrepreneurs emerge from throughout North America and finance their
companies before selling it to bigger companies in the market for a
premium).

(99) See Energy Analysis: Fact Sheet Series on Financing Renewable
Energy Projects, NAT'L ENERGY RENEWABLE LAB.,
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy10osti/46668.pdf (last visited Oct. 28, 2011)
(stating that while there are other mechanisms to finance solar
photovoltaic systems, the focus is on PPA financing because of its
important advantages).

(101) See Michael Kanellos, Shrinking the cost for solar power,
CNET NEWS (May 11, 2007),
http://news.cnet.com/Shrinking-the-cost-for-solar-power/2100-11392_3-6182947.html (stating that conventionally generated electricity ranges
between five and ten cents, according to the Energy Information Agency
and solar thermal costs around fifteen to seventeen cents a kilowatt
hour).

(102) See John Farrell, Concentrating PV. A Cost-Effective Option
for Distributed Solar, RENEWABLE ENERGY WORLD.COM (Apr. 4, 2011),
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2011/03/concentrating-pv-a-costeffective-option-for-distributed-solar (discussing how
concentrated PV may prove to be a more cost-effective and compact
strategy of doing solar power than either concentrating solar thermal
power or traditional solar PV).

(103) Id.

(104) See Finding the Financing for Solar Projects, N.J. ST. LEAGUE
OF MUNICIPALITIES, http://www.njslom.org/magart_0209_pg68.html (last
visited Oct. 28, 2011) (explaining that solar renewal energy
certificates are a type of clean energy credit that can be bought or
sold and give the municipality another source of revenue to offset the
cost for an installation).

(109) See Zoo Poo to Biogas Energy: Great Pootential, TORONTO ZOO,
http://www.torontozoo.com/conservation/BioGas.asp (last visited Oct. 28,
2011) (stating that the 500kW Biogas facility of the zoo will produce a
third of the Zoo's electricity demand and will reduce the
C[O.sub.2] emissions by ten thousand tons).

(110) See Oliver Moore, Newfoundland Seizes Assets of
AbitibiBowater, THE GLOBE AND MAIL, Dec. 16, 2011,
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/article727363.ece
(stating that the company was given four days to surrender entitlement
before the government announced the expropriation).

(112) Press Release, Export-Import Bank of the United States, Ex-Im
Bank Announces Over $455 Million in Project Financing for First
Solar's Exports to Canada (Sept. 2, 2011), available at
http://www.exim.gov/pressrelease.cfm/830B629B-023E-5C34-5863BEEA2A634632/ (stating that the Bank authorized two transactions totaling $455.7
million to support First Solar's exports to solar-energy projects
in Ontario, Canada).

(115) See Oakville Power Plant Plan Cancelled, CBC NEWS CAN. (Oct.
7, 2011), http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2010/10/07/oakville-plant.html (discussing residents' fears that an accidental
explosion at the proposed power plant site, located near railway lines
and major roads, could be devastating).

(117) See Size Matters: GE Plans to Build Largest Solar Panel
Manufacturing Plant in US, ECOFRIEND.COM, (Apr. 13, 2011), available at
http://www.ecofriend.com/entry/size-mattersge-plans-to-build-largest-solar-power-plant-in-us/ (stating that GE Plans to build the largest solar
panel manufacturing plant in United States).

(118) See FPL Celebrates World's First Hybrid Solar Farm,
ENERGY MATTERS.COM, (Mar. 8, 2011),
http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=1383 (stating that Florida Power & Light Company celebrated
the official opening of the first major hybrid solar power installation
in the world, the Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center).

(119) Ontario's Standard Offer Program, ONT. POWER AUTH.,
http://archive.powerauthority.on.ca/sop/ (last visited Jan. 23, 2012).
See generally Jim MacDougall, Ont. Power Auth., Presentation at the
Third International Conference on Integration of Renewable and
Distributed Energy Resources (Dec. 10-12, 2008), available at
http://www.3rdintegrationconference.com/pres/16_MacDougall.pdf
(providing a general overview of the RESOP program).

(120) Press Release, Ont. Chambers of Com., OCC Calls For Canadian
Exemption To Buy American Plan (Oct. 12, 2011), available at
http://occ.on.ca/2011/occ-calls-for-canadian-exemption-to-buy-american-plan/ (stating that the Ontario Chamber of Commerce supports the Canadian
government in its efforts to ensure the Buy American provision in the
American Jobs Act does not negatively impact Canadian businesses).

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